It sort of seems like Amy Poehler’s entire podcast Good Hang was just a ploy to share the Philly Justice trailer, and she knows it, too. Introducing Tuesday’s episode, she read comments from fans like, “The entire world is in shambles Amy, please give us Philly Justice so we have a reason to live.” And so more than a decade later, we finally have access to the mythical clip.
For the uninitiated, Philly Justice is a bit that originated on the Parks And Recreation set in the fourth season. Poehler, Adam Scott, Rashida Jones, Kathryn Hahn, and Paul Rudd had an ongoing joke that they’d done a pilot together in 2003 (but “Rudd didn’t really connect with the producers and he was replaced after the pilot with Dylan McDermott,” Poehler explained at the Paley Center in 2012). Since then, the group has continued to joke about their fake legal procedural and tease the actual Philly Justicetrailer they made that year, most recently when Jones, Rudd, and Hahn were all guests on Good Hang.
On Tuesday, Poehler welcomed Parks creator Mike Schur—with whom she’s reteaming on a new series—to discuss their longtime collaboration and premiere Philly Justice. If you can’t wait any longer to see it, skip to 1:08:21 in the video below. But there’s a lot of fun build up to the trailer as well, including the origin of the bit (a dramatic photo of the cast on the steps of Pawnee’s courthouse) and Adam Scott’s backstory for his fake fictional character Nick Bellows (he was a hotshot New York lawyer having an affair with his boss’ wife on the morning of 9/11 when the rest of his colleagues tragically died, and, believed to be one of the victims, he went off the grid and spent time in Afghanistan before returning to the U.S. and becoming District Attorney in Philadelphia).
But if you’re a Parks fan (or like a good David E. Kelley spoof), the Philly Justice trailer is an utter delight. Nick Offerman plays a flustered judge who gets called to the witness stand mid-trial. Somehow, they actually got Dylan McDermott to be part of their fake production and play Adam Scott’s rival. (“Keep your history in your pants, boys,” Poehler admonishes them.) And like any great pilot episode, it ends with a shout-out to The O.C. as Hahn’s character aggressively drops a file onto Jones’ (a.k.a. Joey Martinez) desk and declares, “Welcome to Philly, bitch.” You can check it out for yourself below.
